


Flight

by lost_spook



Category: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Community: who_at_50, Flash Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 20:44:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Falling or flying, it depends how you look at it – and how soon you hit the ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "Flight" flashfic challenge at Who_at_50 on LJ/DW.

They reach the cliff’s edge and halt sharply. There’s nowhere else to run, but their pursuers are still close behind them. Mary can hear the shouting and movement even without turning her head to look. “Please, do tell me that you have a plan!”

The Doctor looks at her, trying not to smile, and holds out his hand. Impossibly, he’s not even out of breath yet, but then, from what she knows, she suspects he rarely stops running, one way or another. “Jump!”

“Jump!” That is not what she had anticipated or hoped for. She stares back at him. “ _That_ is your plan? That we fall to our deaths here?”

The Doctor waves his other hand. “Words,” he says, in her ear, “always so subjective, and people will be so terribly literal. Look on it as flying, not falling.”

“Flying,” says Mary, “is not something the human form was designed to do.” But she’s already taken hold of his hand and closed her fingers around his. She thinks that she chose to take this leap, to fly, or to run, rather a long time before this.

“Now,” he says, and they jump off the edge together just as the angry mob arrives, flooding the area with noise and anger.

They’re falling; she’s robbed of the breath even to scream, but, then, suddenly, they _are_ flying, or perhaps floating would be a better word. They drift downwards in an inexplicably gentle spiral.

“Doctor,” she gasps, but it’s hardly the moment for speech. The air feels soft under her fingers somehow and she thinks of dandelion clocks and feathers – and wings – and wonders what is keeping them afloat. Then they fly – float – sink – further down and they’re drawn into a moment of pitch darkness, before they finally fall and she gives that belated cry.

But it’s barely any distance to the ground now, and she lands with a thud, still blinking at the change from the air to these new, gloomy surroundings. She lies there, trying to make sense of it all. They seem now to be underground, in some sort of large cavern, although that is quite as impossible as everything else involving the Doctor.

“I was sure,” says the Doctor from somewhere to the side of her, “that – well, if my calculations were correct, of course – another of the gravity gates _must_ be just there. There must have been an utterly fascinating civilisation here once – I should go back and pay a visit sometime.”

Mary picks herself up, the Doctor helping her to his feet, as she takes that in and focuses on what she feels to be the essential point. “Your _calculations_? You weren’t certain? Doctor!”

“Something wrong, Mary?”

“I risked my life,” she says. “I thought you knew what you were doing.”

“Well, and so I did! Look at us!” He holds out his arms at full stretch and smiles at her. “I’m rarely wrong about this sort of thing, you know, and I certainly wouldn’t try and endanger _you_. And you flew, Mary, you flew!”

She did, she thinks, or as near as she ever will, but she only gives him a stern look. “I _fell_ , Doctor, if you wish to be precise.”

“I’m shocked, Mary. I would have thought you of all people would recognise a metaphor when you saw one.”

“Of course,” she agrees, smiling again herself now. “However, as charming an idea as it may be, no matter how much you choose to believe you are flying, the ground will always prove you wrong sooner or later – and frequently sooner.”

The Doctor takes her arm, leading her away. It’s surely too great a coincidence, but she thinks these caves look suspiciously like the ones where they left the TARDIS hours ago. She’s sure she can see a blue light glowing ahead, just faintly. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve always found something interesting tends to happen on the way down – or up.”

She looks over at him. “Up?”

“Well, sometimes the flying is literal, too, you know.”

She knows.


End file.
